Tag: good magazine

I decided to split this already-existent post from last year, since it was lengthy, attracted a lot of views, but only due to its being a mixed bag of topics.

So I decided to separate the donut section from the social responsibility section and the random pretty things 🙂

1. Panera. I love your coziness, despite its being mass-market and manufactured. I love that you supply warm, fragrant bread to America.

And now, I love you more.

I love that you have a non-profit, experimental movement going. I am very glad that the Panera Cares Community Cafes (first opened in Dearborn, in Detroit) became successful. I am really interested in seeing how this framework functions in real-life.

Okay. A slightly bigger hooray. Apparently, the Panera Cares concept doesn’t even have its own official website, nor is it emblazoned on the official Panera site.
I have great respect for CEO Ron Shaich, assuming that this decision (to not toot their own horn) was made on purpose — meaning because he/they wanted to be discreet and not just use the project as a CSR-PR thing, like other companies who trumpet what they “do for the community”.

“…Because if that had been the situation, I may have done some drastic things, like lock myself in my apartment for three days with nothing to eat except an old half-finished bottle of Bacardi, refusing to answer phone calls, untying myself from the outside world, hoping I would float away. Lucky for me though, none of that happened, and we’re both fine.”

…And to be really, really good, you need to do it all the time. I don’t care how great an idea is, if you can’t model it, prototype it, or draw it, then you’re screwed. If you learn nothing else from this blog post, please find a way to learn how to make your ideas tangible.”